UK's 'brightest and best' migrants take unskilled jobs

[Paddy]

BBC News - UK's 'brightest and best' migrants take unskilled jobs

You can hear the full report on 5 live Investigates on Sunday, 31 October at 2100 BST on BBC Radio 5 live.

The UK Border Agency's survey, based on more than 1 000 respondents, suggests that 29% of are doing unskilled jobs.

The 5 live Investigates programme spoke to a frontline immigration officer, based at Heathrow airport, who has long had suspicions about exploitation of the Tier 1 Visa system. The officer told BBC 5 live that he thought the Tier 1 visa scheme is being abused Speaking anonymously, he told the BBC: "The majority of Tier 1 migrants I see coming through fill out landing cards that say 'occupation: supermarket or security'

There are wider concerns that the Tier 1 Post Study Work route is being exploited by some migrants using bogus qualifications to obtain visas.

One high-profile case concerned Tariq ur-Rehman who obtained his visa using a fake post-graduate diploma he had bought from a London-based college

In all my years working in IT I have not met one so called skilled IT emigrant whose work could not be done by someone else in the UK who is need of work. I have some good friends who came here on tier one, but that still does not change the facts. I have hand held tier one IT technicians who should not be working in IT because their knowledge is so poor. One guy from Nigeria I was hand holding for six months so that he could keep his job told me that his intention was to get his wife pregnant as soon as possible so she would have her kids in the UK. (He ended up with twins).

Politicians are too far from reality to know anything about what goes on at shop floor level.

[Doggy Styles]

None of this would have happened under Labour.

[CheeseSlice]

One guy from Nigeria I was hand holding for six months so that he could keep his job told me that his intention was to get his wife pregnant as soon as possible so she would have her kids in the UK. (He ended up with twins).

Its not clear what nationality his wife is from your post, but if she is also Nigerian - having children in the UK doesn't automatically allow the children to become UK citizens, or for their parents to stay in the UK.
In the USA you can have kids and they become American citizens if you want them to be.

[SueEllen]

Its not clear what nationality his wife is from your post, but if she is also Nigerian - having children in the UK doesn't automatically allow the children to become UK citizens, or for their parents to stay in the UK.
.

It would work if his wife was British as he could use the Human Rights Act to argue that he had a right to a family life, but it doesn't stop the UK Border Agency from putting him in custody while his case goes through.

[Paddy]

It would work if his wife was British as he could use the Human Rights Act to argue that he had a right to a family life, but it doesn't stop the UK Border Agency from putting him in custody while his case goes through.

Both he and his wife Nigerian. Both nice people and I can sympathise with then not wanting to go back to Nigeria as they wee Christians in a Muslim country

[AtW]

I was on that program back when it was called HSMP, prior to that I was on much less flexible work permit.

[Troll]

BBC News - UK's 'brightest and best' migrants take unskilled jobs



In all my years working in IT I have not met one so called skilled IT emigrant whose work could not be done by someone else in the UK who is need of work. I have some good friends who came here on tier one, but that still does not change the facts. I have hand held tier one IT technicians who should not be working in IT because their knowledge is so poor. One guy from Nigeria I was hand holding for six months so that he could keep his job told me that his intention was to get his wife pregnant as soon as possible so she would have her kids in the UK. (He ended up with twins).

Politicians are too far from reality to know anything about what goes on at shop floor level.

That must be a known back door in Nigeria because I recently met someone working here whose parents used the same ruse - fly to UK when preggie - have kid in UK (who pays for that?) child is now grown up and working in UK

& yes he was frecking useless too

I have hand held tier one IT technicians who should not be working in IT because their knowledge is so poor.

Yup - seems to be about a decade since I came across the first one..and the overhead in time to get them to do stuff they should already know is severe

[Troll]

I was on that program back when it was called HSMP, prior to that I was on much less flexible work permit.

Were you then just lucky that your wish to leave coincided with a Labour Governments failure to effectively police the immigration requirements?

[AtW]

Were you then just lucky that your wish to leave coincided with a Labour Governments failure to effectively police the immigration requirements?

No, it was like this:

1. Liebor introduces HSMP to great fanfare sometime in 2001: the requirements were so hard that it would literally take Nobel Prize winner to get through.

2. In 2002-03 they relaxed it a wee bit and I qualified.

3. Few years later they drop threshold considerably and flood of bogus apps was inevitable.

I always thought that in principle, so long as the person who applied for it sticks to actual chosen field, it was better option than work permits because it would give a lot less leverage to employers to pay less due to inflexibility of work permit, however in practice it probably only worked for handful of people where as many others viewed HSMP a much easier route legal into UK.

Technically speaking a lot of them should have left - HSMP was pretty strict requiring to show earnings in first year hitting pretty good threshold, and if not then no extension, but looked like they may have relaxed that too - my guess is that they wanted to show how "successful" the program is and they judged success by number of people who were approved, consequently they had to drop requirements in order to achieve their "success" criteria.

IMHO this program should be pain free so long as sponsoring employer pays reasonably high level of salary, say £45-50k, pays £5k for processing or something - anybody who will be legitimately paid £100k+ in this country should get work visa stamped in airport so long as sponsor is deemed reliable (big company).

[Troll]

my guess is that they wanted to show how "successful" the program is and they judged success by number of people who were approved, consequently they had to drop requirements in order to achieve their "success" criteria.

I can believe that - I had some involvement at the Home Office way back - they had a rule that a percentage of the asylum appeal process had to be successful no matter what, to demonstrate the appeal system worked

Kafkaesque.. springs to mind